Working for unity

“From almost everywhere in Berlin you can see the television tower at Alexanderplatz, in the former eastern part of the city. I still can’t believe it was once in another country. It is unimaginable.

I never really used to give much thought to the GDR. I was born in the 1990s in western Germany, a child of West German parents. In tenth grade we had to write an essay about the GDR and my topic was ‘Young people targeted by the Stasi’. I came across the case of some young people in Rostock who had written critical 
slogans on walls and were pursued by the 
Stasi, the East German secret police, because of this. The essay took a closer look at the every­day lives of young people in a dictatorship. Since then, one thing has become clear to me: it is important, especially for people like me who were born into a democracy, to learn more about the topic, otherwise it will be forgotten. You have to work for democracy.

Of course, after completing my exams, I could have spent a year just travelling round Australia. And I must admit that I sometimes feel a bit envious when I look at Facebook and see photos of my friends who are doing just that. But I wanted to do something that really involved my interests: politics, history, society. When I’ve finished my year of voluntary 
service, I want to enroll at university for 
European studies.

At the Federal Foundation for the Re­appraisal of the SED Dictatorship I do research and assist with events or exhibition openings. We are currently working on a book ‘The 
Berlin Wall in the World’. I am writing texts and taking photographs. I am off now with my camera to where the Berlin Wall once stood. After reunification, Japan gave Ger­many some cherry trees that were planted along the former border – they are blossoming now.” ■

JAKOB HAMIDI // EAST SIDE GALLERY

Jakob Hamidi, 18, comes from Münster and is doing a Voluntary Social Year with the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship in Berlin. In 1998 the German Bundestag established the foundation which promotes dialogue on GDR history, accompanies the German unification process and is active internationally in the reappraisal of dictatorships. It partners museums, memorials, archives, victims’ associations and research institutions and supports educational projects in and outside schools. Jakob’s voluntary year 
is coordinated by the International Youth Community Services association. The young volunteer is pictured at the East Side Gallery. Artists from around the world have transformed the 1.3-kilometre-long piece of 
the Berlin Wall into a huge open-air gallery.

Text: Clara Görtz, Helen Sibum; photograph: Stephan Pramme